Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday July 20, 2011 @02:40PM
from the everyone-likes-new-stuff dept.

MojoKid writes "While many tablets are slimming down (and losing valuable ports), Lenovo's new ThinkPad Tablet is on the bulky side with the hope that business professionals appreciate it. The Tablet is a biz-oriented slate with a 10.1" panel, a Tegra 2 (1GHz) chip, and most importantly, a full-size USB port. Lenovo is also introducing a $99 Keyboard Folio case, which will wrap around the device to keep it safe, but also provides a full QWERTY keyboard and an optical trackpad. It features Android 3.1, access to Lenovo's app store, a 2MP front-facing camera, 1080p video output, Wi-Fi, 3G, 16/32/64GB of storage, and a 5MP rear camera. The company also introduced a consumer targeted slate called the IdeaPad K1, and it sports a 13.3mm thin form-factor that focuses on entertainment and consumption."

Then it may read barcodes. My company is stuck on ex-symbol, now-motorola MC50 and alikes, overpriced and underperforming for today's standards. We're seeking an alternative for them, but barcode reading on iPad and such devices are clumsy, not suitable for production.
Hope that full-size USB can power devices.

barcode reading on iPad and such devices are clumsy, not suitable for production.

I don't think you are going to be much happier with the built in cameras on the new device then...

The solution is to use a dedicated hardware reader, such as the Scanfob [serialio.com]. There may be others for the iPad as well, there are a number of choices for the iPhone that are integrated cases.

The iPad does offer a USB port dongle but like you say it can't really power devices.

Agreed. Many people (like myself) want that weight and bulk. I look at many lightweight and thin phones and really notice the poor quality construction which is a by-product of keeping the weight down. I know it won't sustain much damage (which I'm prone to deal out) so it's usually off my list.

Even if he knew you were kidding, it's a valid opinion. Have you seen what your UPS delivery man carries around? I own an iPad (strictly to develop apps for it; my Xoom is much more capable for actual use), and I do indeed question its structural integrity, even if it isn't justified.

While you have a point re: field ready, ruggedized equipment - the article mentioned "business professionals". I was thinking more of the "man in suit" type of person, who really didn't concern himself with a rugged tablet the way a driver might.

Seriously? You thought I was being serious? PS: The iPad may be lightweight and thin, but it certainly is not of "poor quality construction".

Despite the fact you tried to make a joke, you did point out the truth. I know a company that put Ipads into cars in lieu of the semi-ruggedised laptops they were previously using, this lasted a month as the laptops had a life of about 18 months where as the Ipads had a life of about 2 weeks.

They spent over $80K AUD putting them in, then another $30K pulling them out and re-installing the laptops. At least they didn't listen to the idiot consultant when they told them to take out the standalone GPS units

I'm sorry, but the iPad is far too thin. In all seriousness, it is incredibly uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time without an otterbox case or something similar adding a bit of bulk to the edges for better grip. Without it, I can feel it digging into my hands. It's also so smooth out of the box that my friend managed to drop it immediately at the apple store when he picked it up (luckily the anti-theft cable stopped it from hitting the ground). Metal back and glass front is super slippery if your

Does it have a capacitive finger-friendly screen that can also do pressure sensitive (512+ levels) pen input for more accurate stylus use or sketching?

And "8 or so hours in ideal conditions" - man I hope that's not directly from the marketing department. If your marketing guys are hedging their words like that, they know damned well that it's going to go 3 hours under full use, and probably have everything turned of and in active sleep mode for 3 of the hours to get 8 hours of runtime.

I've said it before - it's going to come down to software support. The OS and drivers are going to have to handle stuff seamlessly. Apple gets away with is 'cause they offer so little functionality, there's little to break/go wrong. I want to see this work, but I'm sure as hell not going to by the first version.

Okay I'll bite on this because the way this is presented is a bit of a slanted statement. It's accurate, but disingenuous by what it implies. TCP/IP offers very little functionality, it only does one thing... and it does it really really well. Because it does it so well, it frees up developers to innovate on top of it. Therefore trying to say iOS offers little functionality distracts from the idea that despite this, it's doing very very well for businesses who want to easily expand on the product and pr

No, the iPad really is very limited. I own one,and I like it, btw - but it's far, far more limiting that even the Acer laptop I bought for less money. Still, I have it because the form factor works very well for a limited set of things I do. In fact, I like it so much, that I would need something significantly more compelling to switch to another device. Pen and pressure sensitivity is one area where the iPad does not meet my needs in certain functional areas of my work (and play, for that matter). I'm no

ThinkPad Tablet will have NTrig based pressure sensitive stylus.
iPad2 also suffers huge battery life loss when playing games(a.k.a "under full use"). Those 10 hours are based on video playing at 65% of the screen brightness with WiFi on.

On their website they rather say "8 hours with WiFi on", which is not what marketspeak usually means by "ideal conditions". In practice, as far as hardware goes, this looks exactly the same as all other Honeycomb tablets already on the market - and they regularly get 8 hours of battery time with normal use, so this one should, as well.

I don't understand why publications are so focused on presenting the varying built-in storage options but not even mentioning whether a memory card slot of some type is present. I'd much rather know if the device has cheap expandable storage than know how much the company is going to overcharge me for the largest built-in storage option.

Because to most consumers it's not as the importance as nerds place on it?

If that's true, that's only because they don't know what it is.

Most people, if told they they could get the 16GB tablet now and add another 16GB later if they need it, would consider that a nice feature that makes it so they don't have to spend the extra $100 on the 32GB tablet "just in case".

Clearly it's not important enough for the average consumer to buy one tablet over another based solely on this feature, but that doesn't mean it isn't a great feature (or, more realistically, a horrible omission by the

Really? The Xoom? Surely it didn't have anything to do with the starting $799 price tag. Or the fact that the SD Card slot DIDN'T EVEN WORK! You picked the worst example you could find to support your point.

Because most of the time the external slot is difficult to use. Apps generally don't run from external cards, meaning you have to swap things back and forth. About the only thing you can usably keep on them is pictures and movies.

External slots are a way to get production costs down, since no-one can command the bulk rates that Apple does on flash memory to embed in the devices.

No. But you can get a "nifty" bluetooth keyboard, docking station and protective cover that doubles as a stand.

Can you have a cover which has a built-in keyboard, or at least some convenient way to strap this in? This thing, much like Transformer, is an integrated solution - the cover encloses both the tablet and the keyboard, and provides for a convenient angle when they are connected. You don't have several disjoint pieces to lug around.

It's a touchscreen, why would you need a trackball for navigation?

For all the fuss about touch UI, there are still many applications where a mouse or similar (precise) pointing device is far more efficient. The most obvious example is text editin

Better late than never? Not so sure in this case. Lenovo has a lot of catching up to do to play in the same market as Asus, Motorola, Acer...

The Iconia is a good tablet. I bought the 16GB version on sale for A$421 (yeah, we get shafted on price over here) and the only thing I've found wrong with it is the lack of 3G (but I accepted that when I bought it).

The keyboard itself "docks" via their full-size USB slot. However, they also have a "proprietary" (guy says just that in the video) docking connector on the other side, for when it's docked in portrait on their special charging dock.

Why dont any of these tablets have handles? Seriously... I have a tablet and would just love something on the back or side to attached something a bit more grippy than flat smooth plastic. I've already lost one due to a slippery dry hand on a cool day.

The think pad has the same style for about 20 years now. Yes there were tweaks here and there slimmer lighter... But still the black dull matted plastic shape. I am happy the Lenovo Tablet follows that design.Businesses don't want noticly fancy they want the borring drab color system so they can look really good with it.

$500 sounds like a low end laptop. I bought myself Clevo laptop last year that cost $3000 because I was traveling a lot. But it's freaking awesome and is still working great. However, it was 17.1" and obviously a bit too large to use comfortably on flights. I could easily think about getting ThinkPad Tablet for those flights and also to use comfortably from bed and sofa. I was already thinking about getting iPad, but this really looks better and more business oriented too.

$500 sounds like a low end laptop. I bought myself Clevo laptop last year that cost $3000 because I was traveling a lot. But it's freaking awesome and is still working great. However, it was 17.1" and obviously a bit too large to use comfortably on flights. I could easily think about getting ThinkPad Tablet for those flights and also to use comfortably from bed and sofa. I was already thinking about getting iPad, but this really looks better and more business oriented too.

So, you bought an expensive $3000 laptop just last year and are glad it is "still working great"?! Talk about lowered expectations.

$500 sounds like a low end laptop. I bought myself Clevo laptop last year that cost $3000 because I was traveling a lot. But it's freaking awesome and is still working great. However, it was 17.1" and obviously a bit too large to use comfortably on flights. I could easily think about getting ThinkPad Tablet for those flights and also to use comfortably from bed and sofa. I was already thinking about getting iPad, but this really looks better and more business oriented too.

So, you bought an expensive $3000 laptop just last year and are glad it is "still working great"?! Talk about lowered expectations.

I bought a relatively expensive laptop almost 8 years ago, and it's still working great, too! I regard this as good value...
It has a gorgeous 17" 1920x1200 screen (not that shortscreen 1920x1080 that infests the market nowadays) with every pixel still working. Running Lubuntu with compiz goodness and adequate performance/speed, despite its lowly specs: 1.6GHz Celeron, maxed out with 1GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics. Still using its original battery which gives about 2 hours with fairly bright s

This is DDR-1 SO-DIMM right? Many of the laptops of this generation state in their specs that their maximum amount of RAM is 1GB (being 2x512MB) As a matter of fact, it seems that these usually do support two modules of 1GB. I have tested this personally in two cases: a Compaq N800c and a Packard Bell E1 245. Both specced max 1GB, both work perfectly fine with 2GB.

Just saying, in case it would be useful.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have tried, and it seems that Sony only provided enough address lines for 1GB in this model. It has two RAM slots (one is a real bugger to access, 40+ screws and some delicate manipulation of clips and suchlike), and works fine with 2x512MB or 1x1024MB RAM module, but with 2x1024MB modules it gives a RAM error on boot. I went back to the original 2x512 RAM modules, and returned the 1024MB modules to the shop.

Alas, it was the first one I tried - 1GB in the easily accessible slot, and 512MB in the other slot. Of course it gave a boot error, and I went through the rigmarole of accessing the other slot (under keyboard which must be completely removed and then under two other daughterboards which must also be removed???), and discovering that 2 identical 1GB modules (which each work fine alone) also results in a boot error. My suspicion is that Sony did not build the extra address line into some connector or perhap

At that price, why wouldnt i just buy the thinkpad edge or something? looks to be about the same size + weight. or that low end X series?

Er, because the are two completely different things? A laptop does not deliver the experience a tablet does and vice versa. How many laptops weigh less than a pound and a half yet deliver 10 hours of battery life? How many laptops for 500 dollars have capacitive multi-touch screens? How many laptops at that price have zero moving parts to break? How many laptops are an "always on" device that will continue to get your email and notifications and perform tasks even when the unit is on "standby"? Tablet

How many laptops weigh less than a pound and a half yet deliver 10 hours of battery life? How many laptops for 500 dollars have capacitive multi-touch screens? How many laptops at that price have zero moving parts to break? How many laptops are an "always on" device that will continue to get your email and notifications and perform tasks even when the unit is on "standby"? Tablets in this class have built-in accelerometers and GPS, front and rear cameras, etc. And on and on.

There are, of course, differences. The ThinkPad Tablet is clearly targeted at a business audience. So where the IdeaPad is all smooth lines and curves, the 1.57-pound, 14mm-deep ThinkPad Tablet is all black and features squared off corners and more visible buttons.

my motorola xoom uses the same tegra 2 chip (tegras are dual-core ARM chips + GPU) and it gets 10 hours of video playback using _software_ codec. using optimized video files than play using hardware acceleration, i get 12 hours out of it. web browsing, i can get a comfy 12 hours too.

using sparingly, i got a whole weekend visiting my mother and still had some 10% of the charge when i got home.

tablets are great on the battery side. i don't know how much one can get from an ipad2, but being apple, the number m

Dongle Dongle Dongle. Now with the new Mac Mini, the CD drive has turned into just another dongle you need to buy. In the future, all Apple products will have exactly one (proprietary) port. Of course you can add any functionality you want, just buy the dongle (at $39.99 a pop)! Want an ethernet port? Dongle! USB? Dongle! Collect them all! Trade them with your friends! Is there anyone who sells Apple dongle cases yet? I might want to patent that idea.

I haven't used the optical drives in my MBP and Mini in years. I have used a FireWire external optical, since it's far faster and more reliable than either of the ones in the computers I hook it up to.

I replaced the optical drive in my ThinkPad T510 with a ultrabay caddy that holds the stock hard drive. The stock hard drive was swapped out with an SSD. I like that the ultrabay is hot-swappable for the times I may want to burn a disc too. In the next few years we'll probably see the optical drive start to go the way of the floppy, Software will probably become a download only sort of thing, Apple is already doing this with the new version of their OS.

Are you claiming you can use any old Thunderbolt accessory with an ipad2, because I don't believe that for a second. I'm sure they check for Apple's approved chip/license key before talking to an accessory just like they do for iPhone and iPad 1.

And by "one (proprietary) port," you mean "an industry-standard Thunderbolt / LightPeak port, which will be used to daisy-chain all the peripherals which you can't connect wirelessly," right?

By industry-standard, I assume that you mean "Apple industry standard!" Firewire 800 was good example of that: It was neat, worked well, and no one except Apple really adopted it. This limited its usefulness in contrast to the actual industry standard that was USB. Hopefully Thunderbolt is more readily adopted, but companies are already complaining about the price associated with the connector (much like they did with Firewire).

Because when you predict that in the future, technology will function exactly the same as it does today, you look kind of retarded.

There is no doubt that there have been many connector-based improvements hav

USB port without needing to worry about a dongle (losing it, forgetting it, carrying it around)HDMI out without a proprietary cord/dongleHigher resolution cameraAndroid (a back button!, I don't know how you live without a back button).

I don't see it anywhere, but the USB port also might be able to power devices, which would *greatly* increase ease of use and potential use cases.

You also can't judge the trackpad until you know what it does. ThinkPad users are often considered strange for f

Wow. Your vision is incredible. Is getting anything less than 100% battery life a deal-breaker for you? Maybe there are people who do consider it a compelling use case. I can think of a whole bunch of powered devices that would use a very small amount of electricity compared to what the tablet is using. I'm willing to bet that there are even use cases where it'd be worth it to cut battery time in half.

"Optimal" conditions: 8 hours of battery life. This means it realistically can be expected to get 4-6 hours of "real-world" usage. Plug in a couple of peripherals and reduce your charge time to 2-3 hours of actual use - far short of the length of a typical workday.

This is targeted at "professional" and "workplace" usage. If the point is mobility, why would you consider being tethered to a charger every couple hours a value-add? Do you think any user is going to consider it a good thing that they have t

One, you assume that there are no use cases that don't cut battery life in half (since this is the basis of your argument, you shouldn't give "worst case" scenarios).

Two, you assume that it needs to last (in use) for an entire work day. I don't think I need to explain why this is a bad assumption. Maybe someone just needs to around with a USB barcode scanner taking inventory. I worked at a place that did this (though they used a laptop with a USB barcode scanner. An

Don't know about US equivalents (domestic air flights I guess) but in the UK internal business travel is often by first class rail - with power sockets. That means in a UK business-meeting type day you might spend 3hrs on trains with sockets, 4 hours in offices with sockets and 3hrs in various in between places (taxis, waitng rooms, lobbies) on battery power. In this sort of setup, battery life is much less important than (if you really need to) being able to power/charge a useful peripheral.And of course i

Android (a back button!, I don't know how you live without a back button).

I do not live without a back button. I live with a device where the back button is placed where it makes sense, an infinite capacity to place them in the best location.

Now if we were talking about phones, you could possibly argue that a whole button consuming real estate makes some sense because at least it's located in a single place. But on a tablet that you can rotate, the whole physical button thing breaks down utterly. It's a

Does the USB-port dongle for the iPad even allow most USB devices? The one for the iPhone only allowed very specific protocols, and specifically NOT generic file transfers, the most common use of high speed USB.

Get rid of the/s and you are absolutely right. I don't understand why people ask "I don't see any advantages, so why not just get apple?" Well, what advantages does the iPad have? Not many. And he's wrong about there not being distinct differences ("advantages" to many people) with this tablet. Android is one of them. Dedicated ports without requiring dongles is another. Pressure sensitive stylus is another. Perhaps there are even people who dislike Apple's aluminum obsession.

I don't understand why people ask "I don't see any advantages, so why not just get apple?"

That is not AT ALL what I asked. I asked the question every tablet designer should be asking themselves from the start "What are the reasons I would get this instead of an iPad?". I am pointing out the features highlighted in the article, and saying they do not appear to be enough because the iPad already has them - they are not things making the device unique enough to gain traction in the market.

There are a number of people who will not buy into the Apple ecosystem. The turning point for me came when I had an iPhone 3G and had to keep worrying about updates breaking my unlock. I refuse to again purchase hardware that they refuse to let me use as I see fit. Android tablets don't seem to be there yet, but if they keep innovating like manufacturers have on the phone side I'll be satisfied within the year and actually own my device.

Lenovo is also filtering out all the junk apps in their App Shop, I'm hoping that will mean easier access to quality apps. You'll still be able to use the Google Market too. Lenovo is trying to make this a serious business tool, unlike the shiny toy that the iPad is.

USB port (via dongle)HDMI outA number of third party cases with integrated keyboardsRear and front camera (admittedly slightly lower in resolution)better battery life under REAL conditions (this states eight under "ideal").

The iPad is far lighter too. And the idea of including an optical trackpad so you can "move around the device" is NUTS on a touchscreen system.

So what is going to be the draw? Especially for a business, where the third party aftermarket is much more extensive for the iPad?

For consumer use, the iPad can also read SD cards with a plugin reader (actually a few, Apple makes one but so do other companies).

Do you really want a dongle flopping around while you are walking around with your device in your hand?

However for business use, why would they want something like an SD card so easily lost/stolen to begin with?

How easy is it to lose something that is inside the device? This tablet also encrypts the SD card, so theft is not an issue. If you look at the specs on Lenovo's site you will also see that it comes with Computrace for free.

better battery life under REAL conditions (this states eight under "ideal").

FWIW, their "ideal" conditions explicitly include "WiFi on". And so far all Honeycomb tablets have offered ~8hrs of regular use in practice (generally speaking, you get 1 less hour than iPad for the same tasks), so there's no reason to believe that it's not the case here.

The iPad is far lighter too. And the idea of including an optical trackpad so you can "move around the device" is NUTS on a touchscreen system.

Not at all. There are many things that are far more convenient with a mouse - document editing, for example (think selection... the one that is in iPad drives me nuts when any precision is needed), or when using remote connectivity - RDP, V

Does that netbook have GPS, 3G, IPS display, active digitizer, accelerometer and both front and rear camera's? Didn't think so. It also comes with Computrace for free and it looks like it comes with free accidental damage protection. I'd say it is a pretty good value considering what all you get.